Chef Adam Perry Lang Breaksdown Dry Aging Steak, Steak Cooking Techniques | Joe Rogan

I found out about your restaurant online. I was just googling new places to go for dinner and I don't know maybe a couple years ago and I was googling steakhouses and then I saw that you specialize in dry aged steaks and I had steak that you cooked once that was more than a year dry aged was just so it's yeah it was delicious but it was really weird I mean it's weird it's different anything like a regular steak it tastes like boy it's like a different animal it's like you're eating something you know some exotic animal and that's what I like to do I mean you know more age doesn't necessarily mean better but you know it's just different and that's you know for me as a chef you know I call my dry aged room an environmental chamber I think that's yeah there's a picture on Instagram of me and Adam in the basement that fucking meat locker meat room that you've got and it's it's for people that have never been to a dry aging room it's very odd there's fans blown around everything's a very specific temperature you've got all these different things labeled as far as like what date it was put in there and for no one for people who haven't seen dry aging it's very odd too because you're like hey what is wrong with that meat yeah exactly the outside crust of it you had the here's a photo of it folks you can see it in the background of the it's not working you got a technical there it is so for folks you can see it in the background the meat has like a black crust to it and then you slice that crust off what do you do with the crust get rid of it but is it edible it's not enjoyable and what about for dogs I want to give something a dog I wouldn't eat myself Wow you need dog food what's that to eat dog food no you feed your dog dog food I don't have a dog I wish I'd be honest with you I have a dog and he eats dog food yeah I'd love him to death but he eats he actually eats ground elk but mixed in with regular dog food even that I mean it gets a white ash which is almost like I call it a there's a friendly oxidation I referred to it in the whole process okay is that white ash like the same as you get on outside of salami it's like that it's part of it there it's a mold and the whole concept behind dry aging it's based on three things it's some air velocity temperature and humidity air velocity yes and it's really important I like to you know when I teach people about dry aging it's like if you're on a beach in Jamaica and there was no wind and you just start getting sweat and you're just uncomfortable but then if trade winds went through it would have at the same temperature to evaporate the water off your skin so what we're trying to do is we're trying to at the right ratio evaporate the water off the surface so it doesn't get like a smelly stinky bad mold and dehydrate it slowly what it does is it concentrates the flavor it transforms the amino acids into a whole different compound and changes the flavor altogether and then also enzymes within the meat through the process of rigamortis it breaks down so it becomes more tender so you get flavor enhancement you get tenderization and it just it just blows it away so what does it do to the amino acids it transforms into a whole nother compound it's like a flavor it's it's like when we talk have you ever heard of like concept of like my reaction yes but I don't know what it means anymore well the expression but I forgot what it means yeah the my reaction is basically like when you're cooking something what ends up happening spell it my lard no ma I ll a rd right my lard okay my lard okay I said my okay that's what I know is um so you know whenever you're browning or you're doing different things at different rates amino acids transform into different things and you get different flavor compounds and that's really what happens you know with meat you know so if I dry age you have to handle dry aged meat a lot differently you can't go on it's like okay I'm gonna slow cook this once it's dry aged because then I just it develops a really nasty kind of like funky flavor but if you cook it under high heat like really aggressive like that's why you have steakhouse broilers there's something about that browning of that dry aged meat that transforms that just like awakens your senses that's interesting so you don't slow cook dry aged meat no I don't it gets a livery it's almost like a livery so if I know yeah I don't even if anybody wants dry age above medium I try to talk about I'll cook it any way you want but if you start cooking past medium it's almost like you know seeing someone like transform like it just ages like when you cook it a long time it just ages and just turns into something else it's just it's just people who want well done steak are offensive you should go and eat Burger King you monsters what's wrong with you when I hear when I go to dinner with someone they order well done steak I just cringe like who am I eating yes it's a cultural thing I noticed through with some people like they just want to cook but if they want a well done steak then I recommend the wet aged steak to do well done because you know at least you know you have a fighting chance for some type of flavor that but it's weird like why you eating steak yep yep you know it's true like Joe it's just that's for me you know for everybody it's a criminal criminal act you're wasting a piece of meat true I kind of like I kind of looked the other way I mean it's what do you want catch up with that yeah it's it's painful for me yeah it's painful I mean some people grew up eating well done steak and that's how they like it Joey Diaz eats medium well medium well what are you doing why it just doesn't taste as good and it's also there's an art to the perfect temperature right what's the perfect internal temperature of a medium rare steak which would be like 135 or something no it's it's a bit less but it's not necessarily the temperature it's kind of like how you get there okay let me explain that to you so okay I have this method where particularly for thicker steaks where I'll cook it I start the cooking and then I get it to about 105 degrees and then I allow it to rest at 105 and what ends up happening is as I call them at the just like tempering of the meat and it basically it starts transmitting the the temperature in towards the center and then I put it back in again and then it'll it'll heat up the temperature if you like take it I would say for medium rare even though like on many logs will say okay 120 125 is rare but it's not you know for me if you're gonna do that method a solid medium rare will be about 120 really yeah so why do they think 120 is rare like I don't really understand that exactly you know they'll get there I think they're overshooting it particularly for me it's not rare like rare is is is 110 using the method that I use now different people have different methods which is really what's fascinating about cooking meat I ate it a couple times of eating at a bizarre meats in Vegas which is a fantastic restaurant fantastic my amazing chef yeah it's amazing it's an amazing place to you walk in there it's just visually it's really interesting because they have these grills with live logs I mean they take not live yes but they take logs they're cooking all over fire yeah and they have these grates these grill grates that rise and lower and you know you could see how they're doing it when you walk in the door like as you're walking to your table you're passing by yeah and this method of this idea of cooking over logs like cooking over fire some people prefer that and then some people like those crazy broilers where they're gas but the broiler it's on top and it's lowering down exactly what is the is there a difference and why it really comes down to what your taste preferences okay for me like where I'm at right now dry age without any type of smoke or wood is more preferable because I really want to taste the dry age when you start getting into the wood fire cooking and you're burning logs that aren't burnt out I like to cook basically my wood down to charcoal like to ash so that it's cleaner okay so then you really taste the meat when you start you know burning on unburnt fuel you know the logs themselves it has like these creosote and different flavor compounds that will get on the meat and it's just it kind of just like coats your palate so for dry I like that for more wet age beef okay but for the dry age I really like cleaner I like the steakhouse broiler I like using a plancha you know and that's just like a heated piece of steel it's like you can do that in your home with the cast iron it's called a plancha plancha you know it's just kind of like this flat sheet of steel mm-hmm and it's all about crust development and surface contact so like I like to cut the steaks on a saw so it's a perfect line and it's all about contact direct with the surface it's about the browning of the meat you know if you're going to get in there and you're gonna cook over live wood like that he's doing it obviously right because he's amazing but you know when you raise and lower the shelf like I was saying how I rest it like you can start on the higher higher level of the heat and then you bring it up higher the actual grill higher and it's actually resting while still getting like the tickle of of heat up there the tickle of heat yeah so I imagine like so the flames won't actually touch the meat it kind of tickles it so it's kind of like it kind of wisps at the bottom of the meat and so the way he's doing it bizarre meats he's using wet-age sticks because that's how you would cook over over that kind of I don't know if he's doing it that's my personal preference I mean I think he does do some aging it does do some aging I believe over there so but it's it's just I've watched YouTube videos and how to cook the perfect steak you can watch three different videos from three different chefs and there's three different methods you're like well same thing about dry aging though I mean all dry aging is not created equal I call it an environmental chamber so think about it like making cheese in France you say hey I order goat cheese and you think you'd get one type of goat cheese across the line I'm creating an environment just like a cheese maker okay that's unique to my own I actually have the culture from like 15 16 years ago that I've traveled with hold on hold on you put culture so yeah I've I have like a method I basically take meat that has been aged and I bring those spores if you will from that aging me because you know there's a mold on it it's a friendly mold and it's a friendly mold yeah I like it I don't know I don't want to like you know turn people off to it because this is I didn't know that you brought your own mold yeah so I just figured you just let it dry age it's not as it's not as simple as that for me like it's each environment again so I get away from like someone can turn around and say like my dry age is incredibly clean at a hundred hundred days 120 days because I get there slowly my temperature is very low I like to you know dry age of 32 to 35 degrees I like a higher humidity so I don't dehydrate the meat too soon I like 85 percent sometimes a little bit lower if I want to pull it's really depends you know so when you sit off and so when you say the cult like how are you bringing this culture in and how do you get it to interact with the meat I basically take I take pieces from the previous you know dry age room and I bring it to that and so I put it up by the fan and it will circulate spores you put it by the fan like how do you do that well there's a fan in in a cooler and it's blowing around it's like blowing the so below the the spores around the room so my dry age has a unique flavor in my try you know some great guys who like master of errors in the Bronx which is these guys like my heroes you know they taught me practically dry aging they have their own flavors their dry aged tastes different you know Pat Lefried is another New York guy does amazing dry aged beef as well you know his has a different flavor so you know for me that's why I take a lot of pride even though it's not the most cost-effective thing to carry you know hundred thousand dollars in inventory but it gives me unique flavor profile that is my unique selling point from my restaurant so you have these pieces so like those steaks that we saw in that photograph you take one of those dry aged steaks when it's ready and then you would trim the pieces off then you use those pieces those darkened pieces which has the spores on it and that would how do you know how much to put in there I put as much as I can you know I'm really I don't want it to like clean clean in there I want it to be an environment so it's like a cave and you know I'll put a couple of trays in and then I'm very tactile so I'll touch the meat and I'll feel it and you know I'll taste it I'll see where we're at I'm always cutting into a steak it's like a lot like you say you taste it you cook it yeah like I'll cut off a piece like how we looking at 30 days how we looking at 50 days so each room is different because you know I had dry aged room in Vegas and we had you know ceilings that were 30-35 feet a lot of circulating air it was just it was just like had a different flavor profile we were able to age 150 days and that was like our sweet spot okay and then here in Hollywood it's a lot less of a lower ceiling it it circulates differently it's just you have to really kind of taste it's not just like hey I've dry aged or you go to the supermarket it's like oh you sell dry aged okay great I'll take it and if you think that's what it tastes like it's a good indicator of what it is but if you really want to get you know like down to it you know each dry age can taste a lot different that's so that's really weird so it's it's very experimental in a lot of ways it's constantly moving I take you to dial it in well when I first did it was really by mistake particularly the extended age because you just weren't selling the meat so I had a couple of pieces like like left you know back for a long time and you know I was like I take a cut into and I taste this like whoa I mean this is incredible and I was talking to the old-school guys who dry aged like oh you're wasting your money nobody wants steak over 42 days you know it's just deed hydrating whatever I said no I think one month is something you know there's there's a big difference here in the flavor and as you know we would see like a huge difference to jump into flavor and like good quality not like the funky stuff like the the full year that like that's another level that's very good you say funky and I want to I just want to clarify to people it is delicious it is delicious but it's unusual it's like you're eating something from Africa some unusual kudu meat or something strange game yeah it's got a you only want to you don't want to eat too much like people want like a whole steak I'm like no you just want two slices of it savor it like a fine wine understand it get to know it but don't like hunker down on it how come you don't want people to hunker down on it because sometimes too much of a good thing is not good okay and I say the same thing also for the Japanese wagyu like oh you see all that fat in the marbleization it's incredibly rich and if you eat it like a westerner it's not right it's just it's too much so certain steaks certain types of beef you should be eating only a small amount and appreciating anything more like you just it's just I don't know it gets me it's it's too much for me when did people start dry aging a year like when when did this really because this is not something I mean obviously I'd know nothing about restaurants yeah other than that they're great but yeah but when I had heard about dry aging out here at 30 days dry age 60 days dry age I'd never heard of a year like is this a new thing you know they were doing it in Spain for some time particularly with the older animals like the oxen you know animals that are five years eight years ten years old and they would age these for long periods of time I was not aware of this when I started doing it but they were the first people that I heard about it was doing it while I was doing it there was amazing food writer Jeffrey Steingarten who just like dialed into me and we did a tasting with one of my culinary heroes Harold McGee who wrote the incredible book on food and cooking which is a scientific manual to all chefs around he's amazing guy and he had put in his book that there's really no difference in flavor when you get to that that point and so that later stage so we cook three steaks and we cut a cube out of the center of it and at that point you know he says wait maybe there is something different I'm not sure I mean nowadays you hear more about it because we're chefs we like to play with things we like to push the limits on things but not many people want to make the commitment because it's so costly to carry the inventory and they're scared to actually do it because if you screw it up you know you lose all the money so I see more of it now but back when I was doing it there really wasn't anybody else pushing the limits maybe a few people I don't want to say like I was the only one but you know possibly there could have been a few people but you know